


but peace still came, I'll give him the same

by amitye



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguously Sympathetic Paris, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Heavy Angst, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29564031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amitye/pseuds/amitye
Summary: “Why would you want to be a father of Capulets?” she blurted out, shaking her head and backing away.His eyes widened and she laughed, pressing her hand against her stomach with the pain of it. “Why? You are of very fine line, my lord, and, I’m told, a book writ in the loveliest hand and of the most edifying subject matter, lacking only a pretty cover to beautify him, so why pick the one that will turn your story to a tragedy and your noble blood to a spring of murderers?”
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	but peace still came, I'll give him the same

**Author's Note:**

> While nothing sexual happens in this fic (hence the T-rating), the text does deal with canon compliant underage consensual sex and threat of forced marriage. Proceed with caution
> 
> Title from this gorgeous fansong for "The Corpse Bride": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKXwHGlrJA4

Juliet felt a strange reluctance to die. It was not fear of the pain - for she had been preparing herself for the eventuality she might need to choose death over betrayal of her love and of her own free soul for a few days now, and the sting of the blade against her skin was no stranger to her. 

Although she had cried and raged at her husband’s serene dead face for drinking all his poison and leaving none to her, it was not for lack of means either. 

Tybalt’s knife, that she had put in her stockings before drinking the potion for this purpose precisely, as its owner could no longer protect her himself, she had been forced to throw after Friar Lawrence so he’d run and leave her to her fate, and the idea of going hunting after it in the dark was so chilling she didn’t have the strength to get up from her bier. 

Romeo’s sword, an ornate rapier with a worn blue ribbon and mocking silver bell tied around its hilt, she could not bear to touch, because it had been the sword of the boy her cousin murdered and that Romeo had taken in fury from his dying friend’s side to seal his love for him in blood and tears. Her rage about it had faded to bittersweet envy, that this boy was so loved by her husband while her own dearest childhood friend had changed into a ruthless murderer so quickly, leaving her without a soul of her own age she could confide in - but such girlish feelings were behind her now.

But she had found another dagger in his belt, a little one that would hurt and leave her to gasp and bleed in her dead husband’s arms for far longer than she’d hoped, one that Romeo’s father had given to him as a boy to make him a murderer for pride and greed, as all his kin and her own and all the unfortunate sons of their city were meant to be. Romeo had become a murderer for friendship and love instead, and been chased away and disgraced for it, so the blade was untainted, ready for her to give it its first blood as Romeo had taken hers.

She laid on her flower-strewn bier now, holding the knife to her chest with one hand and Romeo’s head on her lap with the other, his arms thrown around her, slowly cooling but still soft as if they were still curled together in her bedroom, kissing and crying and trying to stave off the dawn. She did not fear death, but suddenly she feared the unknown that awaited her, and the thought of simply falling asleep in Romeo’s arms again felt so much sweeter than facing a future in which she might be alone, or tormented, or an immaterial soul unable to feel caresses and kisses anymore.

The noise of the stone doors of the crypt shifting jolted her out of her nonsense. She scrambled up, letting Romeo slip down behind the bier in the hurry, shaking; her tears had been quiet for hours, but the terror made her sob again.

“I’ll just have to be brief, then,” she spat out, gritting her teeth, and jammed the knife against her breast. Her world blackened as the blade struck her rib and she let it fall in her lap, whimpering in pain and pressing her palm against the stream of blood. When she could open her eyes her betrothed was turning the corner of the burial vault, painful to her eyes in his cloth-of-gold doublet, gasping and wide eyed.

Her hands were shaking too badly to make a second attempt - she wiped her hand on the scarlet silk of her gown, fumbled the knife into her garter and let herself fall stiff with her hands crossed on her bosom. As her head struck the bier she realized it was not believable and jumped down instead, clutching her fists and running straight at Paris instead.

“This place belongs to house Capulet. Why have you come to disturb our eternal rest?” 

She squared her back, trying to make her voice deep and frightening as Tybalt did when he chased vagrant Montague children from their garden, but it was as if he could not hear her, as if she were truly a ghost, like when he had come to talk to her at her confession.

“God, my lady, what happened here? Is this your spirit, or the Lord has blessed me giving you back to me?”

He held out his hand to touch her, but she recoiled away, panting, the anger on her face starting to crack and roll away like bad paint.  
“No, I see, your poor kinsman lies on his bier, but yours is empty. You are truly here, body and soul.” 

He took her hands and pulled her close to kiss her temple, and Juliet was too confused to resist him, her heart beating so wildly it almost drowned out his thoughts. What was this reverent joy in this stranger’s voice? What was her life or death to him? She suddenly felt filthy, as if that sticky hot joy was dripping on her hands and seeping through her skin, taking possession of her.

“Why would you want to be a father of Capulets?” she blurted out, shaking her head and backing away. 

His eyes widened and she laughed, pressing her hand against her stomach with the pain of it. “Why? You are of very fine line, my lord, and, I’m told, a book writ in the loveliest hand and of the most edifying subject matter, lacking only a pretty cover to beautify him, so why pick the one that will turn your story to a tragedy and your noble blood to a spring of murderers?”

The count blinked his pretty green eyes, gasping in bewilderment. “My lady, I see you have been taught modesty too strictly, if you do not even think yourself worthy of the match that was made for you with, pardon me, great enthusiasm, and that now God has blessed with his miracle in returning you to life on your wedding day and giving me the grace of finding you. Come now, you are distraught, but you’ll forget this place of death soon.”

“No!” She tugged, frustrated with the childishness of the gesture - he could so easily just hoist her over his shoulder and drag her away screaming if he so wished, no matter what she did, and yet she could not help herself. “My mother has never tried to teach me modesty, my lord, but wanted me to be proud of things I cannot be, and I’ve had to learn what shame is all on my own. Come, come, I’ll show you.” 

She steeled herself not to sway and weep, thinking of the foreign warmth her mother had embraced her with as she pressed the oleander flowers in her palm - to make a poison for Romeo, as pretty and deceitful as him. It soothed her guilt a little. When her own parents would have preferred her to be a damned murderer than a girl in love, it could never have ended in any other way but this.

“Look, here’s my little brother,” she told Paris with a rising heat in her voice, taking him to the delicate angel statue that stood at the corner of the chapel. “Father said Lord Montague waited for him to be three before he had someone throw a knife at him through the garden gate, so he could know how lovely it would be to have a son and heir before he was taken from him. That it was the only thing he could feel uppity over him, for all the good it did the Montagues, to have a son and heir.”

 _They never deserved him_ she whispered to herself alone, pressing his memory over her heart with both hands. Paris stood open-mouthed, his eyes darting frantically in search of something to say, and she laughed and grabbed his hand and ran off to the scaffolding of tombs on the other side, less elaborate and easier on his delicate sense of decency. Her sleeve fluttered like a wing in the rush, and she wondered if he saw the cuts on her arm, if he would say anything at all if he did, if she should just let her dress fall and show him her scars and her bleeding breast and let him judge for himself.

“Here’s my uncle Giulio.” She pressed his warm smooth hand against the red marble cross over his name. “I don’t remember him so well and Tybalt won’t talk about him, but I always loved his stories. They killed him at a ball, when I was a little girl. Would you want that for your whole life, my lord? Murders at your Christmas feasts, at your masked balls, at your children’s christenings?”

Paris’s face softened, the torchlight molding red dimples at the sides of his reassuring smile. She held her breath as his hand touched her shoulder. “You poor sweet thing. I’m sorry you have suffered so much, but you must know such things do not only happen in Verona - I’ve heard of villains poisoning their own guests, and in Florence there has even been a murder during Easter Mass. There is no great curse on your family alone that should stop you from being happily married, indeed, and I’m sure it’s not so common to happen in every generation.” 

She let the air out in a huffing laugh, hands clawing in her hair. She staggered back to Tybalt’s bier, in a meandering curve that would not take Paris to see the poor sweet pilgrim lying beside hers. He’d told her why he’d come to the ball, in a fit of bitter irony as they were lying together in the dusk light of their wedding bed, but never why his cousin was there too. Was this all the effect meeting her had on Romeo’s fate, to be a murderer the next morning instead of that night? Nothing of that mattered anymore now.

She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t, and just shakily stroked Tybalt’s soft dark waves, the hollow of his cheek, the thin purpling eyelids veiling the fire of his judgement so ineffectually.  
“See? They’ve put him in armor. He was supposed to be a knight, to defend the ladies and the weak and fight for the honor of this city and not just for my father’s grudges, but they made him waste all his bravery in stupid little street brawls until there was nothing left. He was just seventeen, he never wore that armor for real.”

She adjusted the bouquet of blood-red poppies in his hands and bent to kiss his temple, before turning to Paris again. “It’s the same for me. This was supposed to be my wedding dress, you know? But I was married overhastily, and now I won’t wear it for you or anyone but my grave.”

“My lady, don’t say such awful things!”  
He seized her hand and she thought about tugging again, this time to let go and fall back as if they were pulling rope, to dash her head open on the marble floor. It would be so lovely to be disfigured and bloody enough that he wouldn’t want to strew her with flowers and show everyone he met of how sweet and fair a bride he’d lost. 

“No, it’s doomed, you can see it yourself. By God’s law, the noble green-eyed eagle doesn’t have any interest nesting with a little hatchling vulture, and Verona is full of pretty maids. I’ve made my nest with a bird more like myself, and I’m off to die in it.” 

“Sweet Juliet.” She instinctively flinched as he raised his hand, but when she opened her eyes it was only cupped around her cheek. They were standing a little further from the bier now, getting farther away from the center of her tomb with every subtle nudge. “I may… I think I understand your pain. There is no shame, indeed, plenty of young maidens who have seen little of the world fancy themselves in love with what boys may be found in their own homes, I know that well. But now your time to leap and fly has come, and you will find that much more happiness is open to you than what you might have dreamt of in your childhood. You need not think there is nothing for you but death. I would have to be the worst scoundrel alive to think you less pure for such an innocent fondness and deny you your life when it has only just begun.”

She looked up to his soft smile and big earnest eyes and she laughed again, softly, pressed against her palm, all the joy faded out of it. She wondered what would happen if she told him the simple truth. So little should change between loving one doomed, dead boy or the other, and yet everything unspeakable was in the difference - that she was no maiden but married and widowed, and had bedded more men than any of her older and so much wordlier cousins, her enemy, her husband, her brother in doom, a murderer and a pilgrim; that she had defied the same father who must have sold her to Paris as the sweetest and most obedient of girls. Her father would think that, for sure - she used to think she was an excellent liar when she was little, but now she was starting to think just that no one truly heard what she was saying enough to dispute it.

“You’re understanding and most kind, my lord, any girl in Verona would be lucky to have you,” she mumbled hazily as he brought her hand up to kiss, shifting her slowly towards the entrance. She could see the grey light of the early dawn bruise the marble, setting goosebumps on her arms. She shoved them deep into her skirt.  
“You’re still in time to leave this place before anyone wakes up and pretend this never happened.”

Paris turned to her, and she felt the weight of his glare on her red eyes and loose hair. “Indeed, let’s try to be discreet. It’s not yet sunrise.”

 _No, it was the lark, the herald of the morn_ a honey sweet voice whispered in her head, but there was no birdsong in the tomb. She froze in place, her legs shaking too much to go on.

“My lord, I will not love you. You can marry me and no one can do anything about it now, man or God, but I will hate you and make you miserable until the day we both die. Why suffer all this to have what every maid in Verona would give you happily, just for your gold and pretty face? We’ve never spoken, for you think me worthier than any of them. If I take off my dress and show you there’s no great wonder under there either, will you let me go?”

Paris shook his head, pressed his hand on her shoulder, oddly large and heavy. “Don’t think of marriage now. I’ll take you to your parents, I’m sure they will be glad to see you’re alive, and then you’ll decide what you want to do on your own time.”

He pulled her along, so fast she almost fell trying to match his steps. Had it been so hard to keep up with Romeo, who had been the pinnacle of manhood to her, fifteen and tall and lithe as a reed, beautiful as the sunset?

“Is that true?” she spat out, stumbling on her feet, but she knew the answer before she was finished - he might pity her enough to leave her be, he might be disgusted with her enough to let her go, and everything else in between a stormy sea no one had ever taught her to wade through. 

_If you’d bothered to court me maybe I would know you enough to be sure of this,_ she wanted to scream, but that would be unfair - they had spoken now, and there was no amount of sweetness, courtesy and understanding that would make her believe him, no painfully cultivated Christian hope and faith that would make her feel it was worth it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had heard or said something true.

She dug into her skirts until she found her garter, fixed her eyes on the nearing scrap of lead-gray sky above her, leapt up and buried Romeo’s dagger in Paris’ back. 

Time halted as her toes hit the ground. 

Paris fell with a gasp, down on his face. She stepped back and braced herself for him to get up and run off, screaming and bleeding all over the place to call for help. Surely by the time he sent someone to the grave she would manage to get some clean cut of Romeo’s sword and put an end to all this, leaving her body to the screaming crowd to do as they please and her soul safe in Romeo’s arms. She counted the seconds, hugging herself, nudging him slightly with her foot.

He didn’t run.

She bent down, seized the hilt and pulled back, but misjudged her strength and fell back with a revolting wet sound and a spray of blood. She whimpered with the impact, and opened her eyes again on Paris’ still form, not at all bothered with her fumbling and tugging, and burst out laughing until her throat itched and her eyes watered, that of course, _of course_ she would not have the strength to end her own suffering well and early, miserable skinny little girl as she was, but murder should come as natural to her as if the ghost of every Capulet to ever live and die had risen up to join their arms to her blow. 

She rose up and dashed back to her bier, frantically scrubbing the sight of the blood from her eyes, but the floor was slippery - Romeo had brought the night’s dew when he came in - and her run ended tumbling in Romeo’s lap, her face pressed against his cold stiff neck. She sobbed and shrieked until her eyes dried up, jolting at the slightest motion in the hope of seeing her doomed betrothed crawl away, and disappointed every time.

Then she sat up, hazily placed a lily in Romeo’s tousled hair, wound her arms around him and laid his head on her bosom, so she could see the blue of his half-closed eyes one last time before it faded. She laid one last kiss on his lips, still smiling slightly as if the sweet fool was picturing her waiting with open arms on the other side of death, and with a scream, determined not to let him linger alone in exile a moment longer, she drove the knife in. 

Maybe it was better this way.

She could still believe there was a God, and in spite of all her suffering she could still believe that such a God might have pity for young maidens driven to a desperate choice by the threat of a blasphemous marriage, even if they were guilty of self slaughter. There was no such danger now. She had gone to her wedding day a stainless maiden to an innocent boy, but she would go to her eternal wedding bed a suicide to a suicide and a murderer to a murderer, and much prefer the flames of Hell and Romeo’s warm arms to the cold, hard cobblestones of an open grave.


End file.
